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Four powerful functions have been developed for the ASEA IRb 1000 assembly robot. Compliant control with positioning check, relative positioning and pallet positioning are now easily programmed.

This study aims to prepare some disperse dyes based on pyrazole derivatives and fully evaluate their use as azo-disperse dyes linked with pyrazolo[1,5-a] pyrimidine. This study aims to prepare dye polyester fabric at different conditions (pH and time) at a depth of 4% using a high-temperature pressure process in water.

The disperse dyes were created by dissolving enaminone and pyrazole derivatives in glacial acetic acid and fusing sodium acetate at reflux for 6 h. The chemical structure of the produced dye was studied using elemental analysis, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectroscopic analytical methods. The dyeing of Dispersed dyes 14–16 on polyester under diverse conditions was comprehensively investigated in this work.

The prepared Organic dyes 14–16 were found to be highly functional and suitable for this type of dyeing technique. High color strength is possessed by the materials dyed with Disperse dyes 14–16. Even in low alkaline conditions, these dyes exhibited a strong affinity for polyester fabric, changing just little in response to pH changes. The hue of the dyed polyester samples varied from beige to reddish brown and yellowish brown because of the coupler moieties.

This study is important because it offers novel dyes that may be used to dye polyethylene terephthalate fibers that exhibit remarkable brightness and levelness. It also offers a viable solution for creating a variety of colors in polyester fabrics.

Polylactide/nano‐silica in situ composites are synthesised and characterised in order to study their mechanical and thermal properties. The purpose of this paper is to study these properties and compare them with the pure polylactide (PLA).

Polylactide/nano‐silica in situ composites are synthesised from lactide and modified nano‐silica using stannous octoate as a catalyst. The structure and properties of the composites are characterised by gel permeation chromatography (GPC), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM).

The results of SEM showed that nano‐silica and PLA are connected with covalent bonds, and that inorganic phases are dispersed homogeneously in the PLA matrix. The results of TGA indicated that the thermal decomposition temperature rose with the increase of silica content. The tensile strength of the composites is enhanced because of the addition of nano‐inorganic particles into PLA.

Although the preparation process is simplified by a two‐step method, attempts will be made to synthesise the polylactide/nano‐silica composites by a one‐step approach to curtail the preparation cycle.

The composites are expected to be suitable for applications in packaging materials, biomedical and pharmaceutical fields.

Preparation of polylactide/nano‐silica composites is expected to exert the respective advantages of the two ingredients and to produce more practical polymer materials.

The consequences of civil war have been widely analyzed. However, one of its important effects, the human cost of the conflict, remains marginally investigated. Indeed, most of recent literature has focused on the numbers of dead and wounded, while little scope has been given to survivors’ health. Given that the survivors are those who bear the burden of reconstruction, it is crucial to evaluate the health costs of civil conflict to develop and implement proper economic policies. This chapter is an attempt in this direction.

The aim is to assess the impact of the Mozambican Civil War on the long-term health of adult women, measured in terms of their height-for-age z-score (HAZ). Toward this end, two sets of data are used: the household survey data derived from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS+ 2003) which provides a set of anthropometric measures combined with an original geo-referenced event dataset of battles and military actions that took place during this war.

I find that women who were exposed to the conflict during the early stages of their lives display weaker health on average than other women, as reflected by their lower HAZ. This negative effect is correlated with age at the time of exposure to the civil war.

Furthermore, this chapter indicates that the use of the medical concept of infancy–childhood–puberty curves is a suitable tool for estimating the impact of age of entry into the conflict and provides some evidence of the channels through which health is affected by civil conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what options the adult learner has for continued learning and what role universities are playing in providing net-based education. Current options for lifelong learning and improvement opportunities in the educational process are described based on an assessment inspired by principles of lean management.

Sweden is chosen as an example. The current level of net-based university education and the demand for it is assessed using official Swedish data. Lean management principles are used as a starting point to define parameters for interest for the adult learner. These parameters are then converted into a five-level scale for assessing current performance with focus on university courses. The authors also study how Swedish County Councils manage their employee education and carry out a check of courses offered by massive open online course providers.

Lean management principles in combination with customer focus seem to present relevant parameters for assessing distance education. Preliminary results indicate that lean lifelong learning has a considerable improvement potential. The main reasons for this potential seem to be more of a bureaucratic and political nature, whereas technology and resources appear to be less of an issue.

The results have implications for both universities and organisations. The pressure on universities to become more customer-focussed, while at the same time, cost-effectiveness is likely to increase.

Using the customer perspective for educational services and applying lean principles to education.

A lesson has been learned from the pandemic experience that less damages to the environment and realizing more social responsibilities would be the direction of the post-pandemic period globally. The purpose of this study is to focus on identifying the appropriate determinants of the proposed urban travel behavior model to develop Smart Mobility in Smart Cities to protect the environment. Potential to realize Smart Cities with infrastructure development has been explored in this study if road users are keen to combat climatic change which is clear from the challenges of flattening the infection rate through the enforcement of rules and regulations by the various government.

The proposed urban travel behavior model includes sub-drivers for each of the main drivers in the theory of interpersonal behavior (TIB). These sub-drivers emphasize in forming intentions to perform the behavioral changes while driving on urban roads during COVID-19 and post-pandemic periods. A primary online survey was conducted among road commuters in the most crowded place in Malaysia, the Greater Kuala Lumpur. A total of 383 respondents who frequently drive on road during the past one year were surveyed for this study. This data analysis of this quantitative study applied a partial least squares-structural equation modeling approach to determine the significant findings and results.

The significant findings of the study reveal that environmental consciousness and timely deviation in driving during traffic congestion are positively and significantly influencing the travel behavior performance (TBP) of commuters on urban roads. On the other hand, wet conditions due to weather, narrow road infrastructure and habits of road commuters are negatively influencing TBP. Social responsibility is positively and significantly influencing TBP through the mediating effect of the intention of road commuters’ behavior.

The current environmental concerns and societal adherence efforts in breaking the chain of the infectious COVID-19 among people can be manifested to develop Smart Cities with less air and noise pollution in the future. In this context, the present study proposes an urban travel behavior model and tests for its suitability of a greener and cleaner environment for the benefit of future generations. The limitation of the present study is that travel hazards are not included in the framework, as it is a topic of its own volume.

It is timely to implement Smart Mobility on road business models for Smart Cities as the consequences of the pandemic make us to realize the importance of environmental concerns and the social responsibilities of everyone. TIB considers four drivers, namely, attitude, subjective norm, affect and habit which induce intention to perform behavioral decisions. The novelty of the present study is the development of sub-drivers for these four drivers in the context of the urban travel behavior model.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the issue of social assistance receipt among immigrants to Sweden and compare to receipt by natives.

The paper describes the institutional background, reports statistical information and surveys the literature on the immigrant‐native disparity in social assistance receipt.

Most out‐payment for social assistance in Sweden refers to foreign‐born persons, a category comprising 14 percent of the population. Immigrants tend to assimilate out of social assistance receipt. However, receipt continues to be higher many years after immigration among immigrants from non‐rich countries than for natives with several identical characteristics. The elevated probabilities of social assistance receipt among immigrants from non‐rich countries are interpreted to be mainly due to failed integration into the labor market at the destination.

Policies for integrating immigrants into the labor market are also policies for reducing social assistance receipt among immigrants and reducing immigrant‐native social assistance disparity. However, other factors such as the structure of Swedish welfare policy play a role as well.

This is the first survey of the literature on disparities in social assistance receipt between immigrants and natives in Sweden.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of what stakeholders talk about when it comes to sustainable fashion on social media and how. Sustainable fashion is a broad umbrella term, which can distract attention from the differences between the individual subtopics and the sentiments ascribed to them. However, little systematic research exists on how the stakeholder activity and dominant sentiments vary across different sustainable fashion topics.

This study is based on a social media analysis of 19,179 tweets authored by 1,819 distinct stakeholders on Twitter (now “X”) from 2007 to 2022. A large language model, a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on understanding and generating human language, is used to conduct a sentiment analysis of six stakeholder groups and 81 keywords linked to sustainable fashion. Two case examples are used to highlight the differences in stakeholder perceptions of sustainable fashion.

The social media analysis demonstrates how subcategories of sustainable fashion significantly differ in terms of stakeholder interest, activity and sentiments. For instance, tweets on circular economy and relevant subcategories (closed loop, recycling, upcycling, etc.) are popular, whereas issues linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) and due diligence receive little attention on social media. While sentiments toward sustainable fashion are in general positive, discussions on topics such as labor rights issues are consistently associated with negative sentiments across most stakeholder groups.

This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how stakeholders and sentiments vary across different topics linked to sustainable fashion on social media, which has become one of the main channels for communicating sustainability content. The findings thereby shed new light on dominant stakeholder positions regarding a wide variety of sustainable fashion topics.

This paper aims to evaluate the effect of plasma treatment on the performance and color strength of pigment printed polypropylene nonwovens fabrics.

Melt spun nonwoven fabrics have been treated with plasma discharge using oxygen as a reactive gas to activate their surfaces for better interfacial interactions. The untreated and plasma treated fabrics are printed using pigment print pastes to investigate the print properties of nonwoven fabrics that are correlated to surface characteristics. The printed fabrics are characterized through FTIR, color fastness to washing and rubbing, flexural rigidity and moisture management observations.

The fabrics treated with oxygen plasma exhibited higher wettability, higher overall moisture management capability, enhanced color strength and superior color fastness to washing. However, bending length and flexural rigidity have been increased.

This study offers promising findings regarding the surface activation of polypropylene nonwovens for enhanced performance, comfort and color fastness characteristics.